Cheerful, bubbly and colourful, the Girlie-Girl Culture is an unavoidable phenomenon of our western society. This ambiguous and popular culture-both angelic and demoniac constantly oscillates between two extreme images of women: the little girl and the temptress, ingénue, predator. How has the Girlie-Girl Culture managed to conquer the world, to shape and impose guidelines to a new feminine identity? Which cultural codes lurk behind the glitter and pink veneer of the Pink Attitude--codes that guide the majority of today's girls from cradle to adulthood? From Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hello Kitty, Barbie and Bratz dolls, to pop icons Katy Perry, Rihanna or Miley Cyrus and their sugar-candy sexy videos clips and TV shows, romantic comedies, women's magazines and nail salons blooming on every street corner... Welcome to the land of Girly-Girl Culture.
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In November, 1959, Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and favorite figure in what is soon to be known as the Jet Set, reads an article on a back page of the New York Times. It tells of the murders of four members of a well-known farm family - the Clutters - n Holcomb, Kansas. Similar stories appear in newspapers almost every day, but something about this one catches Capote's eye. It presents an opportunity, he believes, to test his long-held theory that, in the hands of the right writer, non-fiction can be as compelling as fiction. What impact have the murders had on that tiny town on the wind-swept plains? With that as his subject - for his purpose, it does not matter if the murderers are never caught - he convinces The New Yorker magazine to give him an assignment and he sets out for Kansas. Accompanying him is a friend from his Alabama childhood: Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), who within a few months will win a Pulitzer Prize.
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This untold history of Toronto's Black queer community spans four decades of passionate activist rebellion. Refusing to be silenced and raging with love, the featured trailblazers demanded a city where they could all live their truths free from the threat of violence. In the spaces they found for loud laughter and sweaty block parties, they also found themselves. Each bit of revolutionary ground was gained collaboratively, whether protesting police brutality, forming feminist collectives or making room for grief and healing in the wake of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Their transformative creativity and visionary organizing made Toronto more livable for generations to follow. Our Dance of Revolution celebrates the living legends among us by unearthing what has been made invisible. Come honour this hidden chapter of Toronto's history and witness the courage it took to dance in the street for the struggle.
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Laurie returns to the Ashuapmushuan Wildlife Reserve to meet with her father. Here, as a child, she honed her sense of observation, which today serves her well in her astronomy career.
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At the suggestion of her inquisitive teen, filmmaker and educator Janine Windolph ventures from Saskatchewan to Quebec with her two children and younger sister, tracing their familial origins to the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi. For the young adults, Corwyn and Dawlari, meeting their distant relatives and great-auntie Irene for the first time is a momentous occasion. Illuminating heavy and heartening historical ties, against the scenic backdrop of Waswanipi's natural beauty, their Elders offer newfound interdependence and hands-on learning, transforming this humble visit into a sensory-filled expression of reclamation and resilience. As the family embraces time-honoured ways of seeing the land, chooses to hear and sit with stories of the past, and gathers to prepare and share a meal together, their individual perspectives mesh to forge a path of deep and necessary truth telling.
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With candor, humour and courage, the main characters in KOROMOUSSO: Big Sister challenge cultural taboos surrounding female sexuality and fight to take back ownership of their bodies. In their quest for individual and collective healing, these radiant, endearing women support each other on a journey that allows them to overcome the trauma of female genital mutilation and rebuild their self-esteem. Speaking for themselves and on their own behalf, they oppose social control of their bodies, inspiring an entire generation of young Canadians and immigrants. "I want the missing piece of me back. I want to be an accomplished woman, a complete woman," confides Safieta, determined to begin the restorative process undertaken by the film's co-director, Habibata Ouarme, in 2013. According to UNICEF, at least 200 million girls and women aged 15 to 49 from 31 countries have been subjected to FGM. Today, many of these women live in Canada, where although the practice is banned, reconstructive surgery is not offered. By interweaving personal accounts of victims of FGM and Habibata's own journey, KOROMOUSSO: Big Sister explores the phenomenon of FGM as experienced by African immigrant women in Quebec.
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How far do you go to find the truth? "When you're adopted, you spend your life... feeling isolated," Montreal filmmaker Adrian Wills says in the opening scenes of his starkly moving new documentary, A Quiet Girl. Travelling from the spare beauty of Canada's most eastern coastline to the red heat of Arizona, the film follows Wills' two-year odyssey as he unearths the-at-times shocking-truths behind his adoption from Newfoundland in the early 1970s. Spurred on by a meager clue on his adoption documents, Wills commits to discovering everything on camera, and in real time. The filmmaker has spent a lifetime circling "the family story," but what Wills finally uncovers pierces into the meaning of family, revealing disquieting parallels between his own life and that of the birth mother he never knew. As an unmarried woman in a staunchly Catholic community, described by all who knew her as a "quiet girl," her choices were brutally few. And as the filmmaker's search exposes darker and more troubling details, Wills is driven to go deeper-leading him to confront his own vulnerabilities and what really happened following his adoption at just four months old.
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Ava slips into an airplane bathroom, adjusts her phone settings-and licks the toilet seat. Her TikTok account explodes. Within hours she's getting interview requests from international media. As the Internet upends traditional notions of celebrity, Anything for Fame journeys into the virtual Wild West to profile an ambitious and reckless breed of content creator. Hungry for notoriety, they venture to unprecedented highs-and lows-in pursuit of that white-hot commodity, clout. Amateur stuntman Peter routinely defies death, leaping between urban rooftops, while self- described "dumb-as-shit" suburban prankster Jake stages hair-raising hijinks inspired by the Jackass franchise. And Ava now brands herself "New Jersey Trash," having parlayed the toilet seat stunt into a lucrative career producing content on OnlyFans. Only a few will strike it rich. Most find themselves dodging multiple pitfalls and moral dilemmas as they navigate a ruthless "attention economy" where likes and views become intoxicating currency. Online fame can exact a devastating price. While stars rise with meteoric and disorienting speed, they can plummet just as fast-with heartbreaking results.
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Passage to Freedom is a moving documentary that features oral histories of Southeast Asian refugees that made the dangerous journeys from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam to Canada. The film effectively weaves archival clips of news stories, wartime footage, and interviews with former refugees and Canadian immigration officials. Canada resettled over 100,000 Southeast Asian refugees from 1975 to 1985. The Canadian response to the refugee crisis was recognized internationally with the UNHCR Nansen Medal in 1986. The film delves into the journey of the refugees' integration into the fabric of Canadian life and highlights the contributions of this first generation and their descendants.
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Dr. Jules Arita Koostachin's deeply personal documentary WaaPaKe (Tomorrow) asks the difficult question: "Who are we without our pain?" For generations, the suffering of residential school Survivors has radiated outward, impacting Indigenous families and communities. Children, parents and grandparents have contended with the unspoken trauma, manifested in the lingering effects of colonialism: addiction, emotional abuse and broken relationships. In her efforts to help the children of Survivors, including herself and her family, Koostachin makes the difficult decision to step in front of the camera and participate in the circle of truth. She is joined in this courageous act of solidarity by members of her own family, as well as an array of voices from Indigenous communities across Turtle Island. Each person's individual journey is different, but in sharing their experiences, ways to create space, heal from chaos and forge new paths forward are explored.
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Stolen Time is writer-director Helene Klodawsky's riveting feature documentary about charismatic elder rights lawyer Melissa Miller and her mission to take on the opaque for-profit nursing-home industry. It's Miller's most challenging case yet: a mass tort (class action) against some of the world's most powerful long-term care corporations. They stand accused of neglecting their vulnerable charges while reaping huge profits. Booming elderly populations worldwide add urgency to holding these corporations to account. Most of us wish to grow old at home, continuing to live independently. But when illness or lack of support make it a necessity, either for ourselves or our loved ones, we hope to receive compassionate and trustworthy care. The realities of large corporate-owned care facilities paint a very different picture. Stolen Time is a compelling call for justice. As well as sharing stories of desperate families who've turned to the courts as a last resort, Klodawsky exposes surprising testimonies and images from care workers, researchers and change-makers. We follow Miller and her team as they courageously challenge an industry noted for lack of transparency and accountability.
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The Geographies of DAR is a captivating and deeply evocative film that delves into the life and literary works of acclaimed Canadian author David Adams Richards. Through stunning visuals, insightful interviews and poignant excerpts from his writings voiced by fellow authors, the film explores the profound connection between Richards' personal geography and his literary landscapes, revealing how the intertwining of his own experiences and Eastern Canada's Miramichi shaped his storytelling. The masterful black-and-white cinematography captures Richards' Miramichi in all its harshness and beauty. Rivers flowing and far-spread forests, dirt roads and highways, a tavern, or a burning house: the film takes viewers on a journey through the complex roads and paths of his characters' lives, tracking their race towards self-destruction or their quest for freedom and redemption. In the film, one of the most reserved of Canadian literary giants confides like never before. With disarming candour and striking perceptivity, he tells the story of his childhood and adolescence, his struggles, and demons, and declares his love of family and friends.
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What does it mean to lose a colour? Losing Blue is a cinematic poem that delves into the impending loss of some of the most extraordinary blues on Earth-the otherworldly blues of ancient mountain lakes. Glacier-fed alpine lakes each have a unique blue formed by the mountains and ice that shaped them. These intense colours hold the memory of "deep time," geological processes millions of years old. Now climate change is rapidly accelerating environmental shifts and causing some of these spectacular blues to vanish. Losing Blue is an expansive metaphor for the massive and subtle impacts of climate change. With stunning cinematography, the film immerses viewers in the magnificence of lakes so rare that most have never seen them, pulling us in so that we experience these bodies of water as if we were standing alone on their rocky shores-witnesses to their power and acutely aware of what their loss would mean, both for ourselves and for the Earth.
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Inside a shelter, the voices of participants in a talking circle give form and shape to shocking and oppressive moments from their pasts. In the process, a common sense of humanity and solidarity emerges, built on the shared experiences of lives that have been devastated. Through the power of these bonds, participants can face their hidden traumas by bringing them into the light of day. In the circle, the reality of intimate partner violence and its complex workings is fully revealed. In Afterwards, young filmmaker Romane Garant Chartrand uses a powerfully empathetic approach that shies away from fully showing participants' faces-emphasizing the anonymity of the struggles these survivors have faced, as well as the universality of their experiences. She amplifies the voices of women whom others have tried to silence, and gives us privileged access to a space of sisterhood and solidarity.
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Arab Women Say What?!, by Egyptian-Canadian filmmaker Nisreen Baker, presents Arab women as we've never seen them before. Nermeen, an Egyptian Canadian, flies to Egypt to help her ailing mother, returns to Edmonton, and shares with us her poem about feeling exiled. She introduces us to her friends from different Arab countries, who "love to laugh": Nedra, Carmen, Aya, Sanaa, Tereza, Laylan and Hala. They are outspoken and daring Arab-Canadian women who don't shy away from showing their strengths and vulnerabilities. And in this textured film, the women take agency in telling their stories by documenting their lives on cellphones during the pandemic. Through a mosaic of eight windows, the women offer us a big window into their lives, revealing their unique perspectives, sharing personal experiences and claiming their narratives. Amid discussions, arguments and jokes, they deconstruct their patriarchal culture and grapple with challenging-and often taboo-issues, with Aya's singing punctuating these conversations.
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Looking for Horses is a film about a friendship between the filmmaker and a fisherman, who lost his hearing during the Bosnian civil war and retreated to a lake to live in solitude. The filmmaker, son of Bosnian parents, struggles to communicate as he lost his mother tongue due to a stutter. Despite their speech and hearing limitations, a bond develops between the young man and the veteran, as he shares his world of the lake: full of large catfish, wild horses, wide silences, and dangerous thunderstorms.
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Inside the remnants of an abandoned utopian project, a young life persists in the form of a fierce little girl. As the city around her transforms, so looms an end to childhood dreams.
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No Place for You in Our Town takes us inside the roughest Bulgarian football gang from the ex-industrial city Pernik. The film follows communal and personal crises to show life beyond the clichéd jokes about its citizens' roughness.
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For 18 years, director Claire Doyon has been filming Pénélope, her daughter with autism. Composed of DV tapes, Super 8 reels and HD archives, Penelope My Love traces the relationship between mother and daughter through different stages--the shock of the diagnosis, the fight against it, the resolve, the acceptance and discovery of a different mode of existence.
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After the death of his grandmother Emma, Robin Hunzinger and his mother Claudie found a carefully preserved collection of letters which Emma received from a girl called Marcelle. Marcelle and Emma met in the mid-1920s. Secretly, love blossomed between the two teenage girls, but after two years they parted ways. Marcelle developed tuberculosis and was admitted to a sanatorium, where she wrote many letters to Emma, letters that still burn with great evocative power.
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Safe haven weaves together powerful stories of U.S. war resisters who sought refuge in Canada during wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The film shows how Vietnam-era resisters participated in a movement to support the younger generation of U.S. soldiers. Safe haven exposes realities and myths of Canada as refuge.
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When South Africa transitioned to democracy in 1994, the so-called "rainbow nation" was hailed around the world as a political miracle. Yet, 25 years later, South Africa is the most economically unequal country in the world and the legacy of economic apartheid continues to define day-to-day life for most South Africans. Heartbreakingly insightful, the film consists of remarkably frank interviews with a full spectrum of South Africans, from informal workers to pop culture figures to artists, politicians, and academics. Moving through the last three decades, the film follows the South African narrative from the early days of liberation to a contemporary society that is increasingly fractured and in which the culture of resistance and protest is as strong and vital as it was during the height of legislated apartheid.
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